Temporary Live-In Boyfriend

Submitted by megan on Sun, 08/17/2008 - 22:43

In the airport, apropos of nothing, I said "I don't think it's conferences. I think it's us."

With CT in NOLA, I'd assumed the sense of severe disconnection from my real life had to do with a new city, a new lover, and the inherent nature of conferences. Now, at the end of our week-long stint at Camp Hotza, I'm not so sure.

Theoretically, I was in my life.

My house, even though I didn't know where half my stuff was. My city, which is much noisier five doors south, but still laid out the same way with the same people in it. My sister in my second city, Montreal, where we ran into more of my friends.

But I found myself wanting to spend less and less time in my life, and instead burrow into the space that CT and I were creating.

We are an unlikely pair.

He had never heard of The Vagina Monologues before. I had to ask why he was excited to see the Easton plant off the highway out of Montreal.

Today, my routine shifts from eating passably healthy food at restaurants to my regular brown rice and greens; from hoping I get enough exercise through walking and sex to the usual pendulum of yoga and running. CT will happily go back to playing hockey, driving, cycling, and pepperoni pizza.

But none of that seemed to matter particularly, not for this trip, at any rate, not for a week. Our Venn diagram overlap involved things that are seriously important to me - in friends and lovers and partners. He is also kind, easy-going, a good communicator, dryly funny. He was a lovely house boy guest, and my home feels that much less cozy tonight.

There wasn't much talk about "We." Both of us are cautious, either by inclination or through experience. There were shy admissions that we'd like to see each other again, a brief talk about how that might work. An agreement that needed to talk more, an agreement that our last few hours together might not be the best time for that to happen.

Instead, those hours were as they should be. We didn't talk much. We touched a lot. Intimately, but not sexually so. I managed to leak only a few tears at the airport. He caught his plane on time.